Columbus Mayor Robert Smith will call an emergency city council meeting Thursday to address violence at a Seventh Avenue North convenience store where two men were shot Tuesday.
Columbus Police Department has named Leronn Kayshaw Gregory, 25, as a person of interest according city public information officer Joe Dillon.
Smith and city officials from the Columbus Police Department, Columbus Fire and Rescue and Building Inspection met with Mutee Nagi, store owner of Okay Foods, early Wednesday morning to discuss ways to curtail crime in and outside the store. City officials asked Nagi to close the store at 5 p.m., Dillon said. Nagi resisted making any changes to his operation, according to city officials.
“We’ll draw up a proposed ordinance that will cause them to have to close at 5 p.m.,” City attorney Jeff Turnage said.
Officers responded to the store Tuesday at about 2:15 p.m. to find two men had been shot inside the store. Both men were taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle, and one was later airlifted to University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. Both are in stable condition.
CPD officers have filed more than 120 incident reports in or outside the store in the past year, ranging from disturbances and complaints about loitering to shootings, said Turnage.
There have been three shootings there in the last two years, said Stephen Jones, city councilman for Ward 5, where Okay Foods is located.
City officials indicated that historically Nagi has not cooperated with police or investigators. About a month ago, investigators asked Nagi to put a surveillance camera outside the store. Nagi agreed, Dillon said, but had not done so by the shooting yesterday. Turnage added Nagi had not always been cooperative in the past with letting detectives look at videos from the camera inside the store.
Nagi declined to speak with The Dispatch for this story.
Smith says he expects business owners to be cooperative when crimes occur around their venues.
“We would especially expect them to cooperate with law enforcement and control the loitering about their place of business,” Smith said.
This is not the first time city officials have suggested closing businesses early or even putting moratoriums on them to curtail crime in and around the businesses. In 2015, the city council passed an ordinance forcing certain convenience stores to close at 10 p.m. This year, the city council put a moratorium on buildings at the Columbus Fairgrounds, which has been the scene of two high-profile shootings in the last three years. Following a Sunday morning shooting outside the Princess Theater, a popular downtown night club, Smith suggested putting a moratorium on The Princess as well, but walked the idea back at Tuesday’s city council meeting when the Princess owner Bart Lawrence and his attorney Mark Jackson conceded to close the business at 10 p.m. and limit the number of patrons the business could take at one time.
Dispatch reporter Alex Holloway contributed to this story.
Previous arrest
Gregory was previously indicted in a January 2016 shooting in East Columbus. In that incident, Gregory is accused of killing Brandon Michael Gordon.
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